Quick Onion Crescent Rolls

Soft and flaky dinner rolls are swirled with moist onion flakes, poppy seeds, and a hint of sweetness. Store-bought dough means these onion crescent rolls are ready in twenty minutes!

One of my very favorite, can’t-pass-them-up, kinda sorta crave them foods are onion rolls. You know the ones. Fluffy soft dough that’s topped with (good) or swirled with (great!) onion. In my opinion, these rolls are well worth having to pop a mint afterwards before you find yourself in a conversation with someone, and/or flossing your way to a poppyseed-free smile.

So here are some onion rolls! Or at least a super quick, impossibly simple version of them.

That works for you, right? The taste and consistency here is spot-on, and these onion crescent rolls feature the quintessential swirls of moist onion flakes and poppy seeds, with just a touch of sweetness. I went through a phase where I would eat onion rolls regularly. I’m not going to expand on “regularly” because I’m pretty sure if I told you the frequency with which I plowed through a six-pack of them, you’d think I had issues. Let’s just say “often”.

Sometimes the onion roll craving would hit, I’d have none in the house, and I didn’t feel like driving to the store. Holy first world dilemma, huh? No matter, if you’ve got a tube of crescent roll dough hanging around, you can go from craving to snacking in just about twenty minutes.

As we’re using refrigerated dough here, there’s no rise time required. The recipe only calls for six other ingredients – olive oil, dried minced or chopped onion, sugar, salt, poppy seeds, and honey. All things that you may already have in your kitchen pantry (or can purchase once and have for a long time to come).

Full disclosure: The day I made these rolls, I ate one for breakfast. Then I snacked on another mid-afternoon. Aaaand that same day I may or may not have eaten one for dessert. If my experience is any indication…you’ve been warned.

In a small saucepan, heat 3 tbsp of olive oil over low heat. Add minced onion, sugar, and salt and stir to moisten all of the onion. Let onion flakes heat in the oil for 5-8 minutes, or until edges of flakes become golden brown and onion becomes just slightly soft (flakes will also soften while baking later on). Remove from heat.

Unroll crescent dough and separate the eight perforated triangles. Add remaining 1/2 tbsp of olive oil to a small bowl, and then brush it on the top of each dough triangle. Spread sauteed onion flakes evenly over eight triangles. Drizzle a small amount of honey over top of onion flakes, then sprinkle poppy seeds.

Roll up each dough triangle (beginning to roll with the longer end). Place rolls onto prepared baking sheet. Brush remaining olive oil from the bowl over top of crescent rolls and sprinkle extra poppy seeds over top (optional).

Bake for 9-10 minutes, or until outsides of rolls are golden brown and firm to the touch. Place rolls on wire rack to cool.

I do that same thing all the time. I’m talking to my husband or kids about something someone made and they’ll ask who is that? It is kind of like having imaginary friends, but with bloggers you get great recipes 😀
These rolls look delicious. I love that you start with something easy and then elevate the flavors!

Crescent rolls by themselves are addicting, so I can only imagine how much more addicting this onion version is. And I’d be just like you. Anything goes for breakfast…these rolls would be no exception!

I love all the blogging connections I’ve made. It’s so fun to have friends I’ve never met but feel like I know so well. 🙂

Hello, Alyssa! I’m afraid I am actually in the ‘don’t know what a rainbow cookie is’ so I’m actually off to google it right now ….
OK, I’m back …
Wow, that’s so cool! I assume they’re more like a cake? When I was a child, we used to have a cooked lunch at school, and everyone’s favourite dessert was ‘rainbow sponge’ which was a bit like this but more like a steamed pudding … served with custard!
Love the idea of the crescent rolls by the way … I feel like they would be beautiful dipped into soup!
P.S. I LOVE the worldwide food blogging community, too! 🙂

Hi Helen! Yes, the consistency of the “cookies” are definitely more cake-like than cookie-like. A more accurate name would be little rainbow cake slivers I suppose! It has been fascinating for me to learn how varied the prevalence of these little guys have been not only internationally, but regionally here in the US as well! Now it’s my turn – I haven’t seen a rainbow sponge, but anything served with custard sounds pretty good to me! And I agree whole-heartedly. These rolls would be a wonderful pairing for soup. 🙂

Love simple recipes like this one! And crescent rolls are one of the best inventions ever, especially when they’re dressed up like these ones.
Also, your entire post was so much fun to read – my husband has recently started to ask if we’re talking about a person we actually know or about one of my blogging friends, ha!

I hope you can find a way, Alex, because they’re delicious! I’m not too familiar with gluten-free baking, but if a gluten-free dough is hard to find in stores, perhaps a gluten-free homemade dough recipe would do the trick (though it would take additional time and steps). Good luck! 🙂

I love crescent rolls! This is an awesome recipe and I can’t wait to try it. 🙂
I can definitely relate. I’m closer with some of my blogging friends (who I’ve never met) than I am with some of my friends that I actually see. That’s definitely not something I expected when I entered the blogging world, but I love it. 🙂

I’m guilty of having talked about other bloggers as if they were real life friends too ooops haha. Never heard of your lovely rainbow cookies, but I do have seen these onion rolls around. Although the version we have here doesn’t look near as fluffy and flaky as this one. Oh wow, I can see now why you’d have them for breakfast! ;–)

1) You are so right… it’s super cool how us food bloggers get connected and live all around the world. It’s really is such a fun and exciting opportunity.

2) What?!?!! How sad that people across the country do not know the glorious baking victory that are rainbow cookies. Alyssa, you need to change this, one cookie and one person at a time. It’s a big job, but I know you can do it.

3) I’m such a sucker for crescent rolls. I could eat like 50 of them in one sitting.

Hi! I'm Alyssa, a twenty-something podcast junkie with a penchant for baking, boots, and pretty little things. Also strong coffee and spunky dogs. There's a good chance I can be found in the kitchen, wearing sequins, and dreaming of DIY. ♥